Using Your Smartphone To Capture Great Photography

Photo by Sydney Eubanks

USING YOUR SMARTPHONE TO CAPTURE GREAT PHOTOS

USING YOUR SMARTPHONE TO CAPTURE GREAT PHOTOS The digital age has brought many inconveniences. Inbox overload! Screen fatigue! Never unplugging! But despite what critics say, technology is behind one of the biggest advancements of the modern age: enabling everyday people to take expert quality photos with the snap of a button – or, more accurately, the tap of a finger. If you’re among the army of smartphone users who know they’ve got great cameras at their fingertips but don’t know how to use them, we’re here to help. Walsworth has created a brief primer on how to capture yearbook-worthy photos using only your smartphone camera and a few simple apps.

Photo by Kylie Jones

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MOBILE PHONE CAMERA SETTINGS Foremost, it pays to understand the basics of a smartphone camera’s settings. While many apps will give you a range of controls nearly equal to a DSLR, you really don’t need all that. You just need to know:

ZOOM • The zoom function on most touch screen smartphone cameras works by zooming in (getting closer to the subject) when you spread your fingers apart, and zooming out when you draw them close in a “pinching” gesture. • You’ll want to avoid using the zoom on most camera phones. Many smartphone cameras use digital zoom, which affects the resolution negatively. However, some smartphones now include a telephoto or optical lens, which won’t. When in doubt, it’s better to get physically closer to the subject. DEPTH OF FIELD • Depth of field is one of the most prized effects of a “real” camera: the effect that some items are sharp, while items in the foreground or background are blurry. On the iPhone, you can touch one part of the screen, and it will focus there. Portrait mode, which most newer smartphones have, makes it even easier and prettier. FLASH • The lightning bolt symbol signifying the flash will probably be at the top of the screen or under the Control section. • By clicking the lightning bolt, you can see whether it is on, off or on auto. If the camera is on auto, the flash will turn on in low-light situations. If the lightning bolt symbol has a line through it, the flash will remain off. If the flash is turned to the On setting, it will go off for every photo. • Flash should be used in moderation. It’s best for when you want to capture a subject being lit from behind. Be aware that the light created by a flash isn’t flattering. It will typically age the person being photographed.

EXPOSURE • Exposure is how much light the aperture lets in. You control the exposure by directing the camera’s focus to different areas on the screen. Touch a dark area to make the whole photo lighter, and touch a light area to make the photo darker. TIMER • The timer is usually represented in your smartphone’s camera and in most camera apps as a little circle with a clock hand in it. You can touch it, set the amount of time, set up the shot, then hit the button and wait for the camera to take the photo. SELFIE MODE • Most smartphones have two cameras, one in the front and one in the back. On iPhones, there’s a little camera icon with a reverse arrow that you press to turn the image around. Some Android phones have the same, while others have a button on the back of the phone to enable the effect. • On most smartphones, this is designed to be the secondary camera. The “selfie camera” will typically have a lower resolution than your phone’s rear camera. This is changing as smartphone companies adjust to the popularity of selfies. Newer models are being made with increasingly better front-facing cameras. CAMERA LENS • Keep it clean. We take our smartphones with us everywhere. They’re bound to pick up some dirt, dust and smudges. You’ll need to sometimes wipe the lens with a microfiber cloth, like what you’d use to clean glasses.

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FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Got the camera’s basics down? Good. Now it’s time to learn some fundamentals of lining up and taking a great shot. You can learn more about these fundamentals in Walsworth’s Yearbook Suite curriculum unit, “Photojournalism: Telling Stories with Images” and at yearbookhelp.com. RULE OF THIRDS The Rule of Thirds goes like this: Divide the screen into nine parts using three vertical and three horizontal sections, as if you were about to play a game of tic-tac-toe. Some smartphones have settings that will overlay this grid on the screen for you. Now line up your shot so your main subject falls on one of the four points of intersection. This is where the eye will go anyway, so using this rule helps the viewer focus. If there’s a line in your photo, like a horizon or a tall building, have it fall along one of the lines in the grid. This will create a better photo than placing elements dead center. BACKGROUND The background should be heavily blurred to allow the eye to focus on the main subject, or it should be relatively neutral compared to the subject, say, a person on a background of grass. If the background is too busy, the photo’s subject can be unclear to the viewer. CROPPING When you crop a photo, the idea is to remove conflicting elements. That could include people photobombing the picture or an errant road sign. The result should be a tight shot that includes only the elements you were trying to capture.

Photos by Christine Hysell, Sydney Pressley and Bradley Maruoka

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EDITING YOUR SMARTPHONE PHOTOS So now you have your basic shot, and it needs a little editing to be yearbook-ready. Here are some basic apps to use and steps to take. Top Apps to Try Especially when you’re first learning, you want a basic photo-editing app that’s easy to use but has a lot of functionality. Top choices include VSCO, Camera+ for iOS or Android, and Snapseed for Apple or Android. It’s good to read the descriptions, but don’t spend too much time worrying over which app to choose. The best way to find the perfect app for you is by downloading and playing around with it. Many photo editing apps are available for free. You could spend an enormous amount of time making endless adjustments to a photo. However, it’s best to start with the three characteristics most important to a photo’s quality and beauty. Exposure If the exposure is too bright, you can’t see anything. Too dim and you have the same problem. As discussed, you can adjust exposure while taking the shot, but you can also brighten or dampen photos while editing them. Try to make it look as natural as possible. Saturation Saturation controls the amount of color. Some people mute their photo’s saturation for artistic effect or ramp up vibrancy to make it really pop. Whatever you do, don’t take it too far – a natural-looking picture is always best, especially in print. Clarity Unless you have intentionally blurred your entire photo, you at least want one aspect of it to stand out sharply. If you didn’t quite get the right effect, you can use an editing app to sharpen things up. But again, don’t go too far or your photo will start to look oddly angular.

Photos by Abigail Lassiter, Chandler Losh and Megan Groth

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RESOLUTION: A CRITICAL FACTOR You know how sometimes you go to print a beautiful photo, and instead of the work of art you were expecting, you see a teeny little black-and white box on the paper? That’s a resolution issue. Your photo may look perfectly good as-is on your smartphone’s screen, but if you don’t pay special attention to pixel density in saving your finished product, it likely won’t come out that well in print. To print correctly, your images require 300 pixels per inch at 100 percent size. Those tiny, grainy photos usually have less than 300 pixels per inch – often way less. Before printing, you need to make sure you save it correctly. That means exporting the edited version to your desktop at full resolution, then saving to the correct pixel density. You can do this easily with programs such as Photoshop or Preview. Of course, you don’t want to lose any of your original photos, so save the raw, edited and resized versions in separate files, but put them in the same folder. That way, if you want to do something else with them later, you’ll have everything you need. When something spontaneous happens in front of you at school that demands a photo, the best camera is the one you have with you. Luckily, smartphone photography follows the same basic rules as more advanced versions of the craft, but enables even the newest newbie to create high-quality photos that students will enjoy seeing in their yearbook for decades to come. So, what are you waiting for? Time to start practicing and get creating!

Photo by Laura Benteman

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FIND MORE WALSWORTH EBOOKS Walsworth is among the top three yearbook printers in the U.S., and the only family-owned publisher of yearbooks. As a leading provider of resources for yearbook advisers, Walsworth’s focus is making the yearbook creation process easier and more

successful for our schools. Learn more by visiting us at walsworthyearbooks.com.

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